Thorns

NINE: IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE WORD

For Burris it was something like being born. He had not left his room in so many weeks that it had come to seem a permanent shelter.

Aoudad thoughtfully made the delivery as painless as possible for him, though. They left at dead of night, when the city slept. Burris was cloaked and hooded. It gave him such a conspiratorial look that he was forced to smile at the effect; yet he regarded it as necessary. The hood hid him well, and so long as he kept his head down, he was safe from the glances of the casual. As they left the building, Burris remained in the far corner of the dropshaft, praying that no one else would summon it as he descended. No one did. But on the way through the entrance, a drifting blob of glowing light illuminated him for a moment just when a homecoming resident appeared. The man paused, staring beneath the hood. Burris remained expressionless. The man blinked, seeing the unexpected. Burris’s harsh, distorted face regarded him coldly, and the man moved on. His sleep would be tinctured with nightmare that night. But that was better, thought Burris, than having the nightmare steal into the texture of your life itself, as had happened to him.

A car waited just beyond the lip of the building.

“Chalk doesn’t ordinarily hold interviews at this hour,” Aoudad chattered. “But you must understand that this is something special, He means to give you every consideration.”

“Splendid,” Burris said darkly.

They entered the car. It was like exchanging one womb for another less spacious but more inviting. Burris settled against a couch-seat big enough for several people, but evidently modeled to fit a single pair of enormous buttocks. Aoudad sat beside him in a more normal accommodation. The car started, gliding quietly away in a thrum of turbines. Its transponders picked up the emanations of the nearest highway, and shortly they left city streets behind and were hurtling along a restricted-access route.

The windows of the car were comfortingly opaque. Burris threw back the hood. He was accustoming himself in short stages to showing himself to other people. Aoudad, who did not appear to mind his mutilations, was a good subject on whom to practice.

“Drink?” Aoudad asked. “Smoke? Any kind of stimulant?”

“Thank you, no.”

“Are you able to touch such things—the way you are?”

Burris smiled grimly. “My metabolism is basically the same as yours, even now. The plumbing’s different. I eat your food. I drink your drinks. But not right this moment.”

“I wondered. You’ll pardon my curiosity.”

“Of course.”

“And the bodily functions—”

“They’ve improved excretion. I don’t know what they’ve done to reproduction. The organs are still there, but do they function? It’s not a test I’ve cared to make.”

The muscles of Aoudad’s left cheek pulled back as though in a spasm. The response was not lost on Burris. Why is he so interested in my sex life? Normal prurience? Something more?

“You’ll pardon my curiosity,” Aoudad said again.

“I already have.” Burris leaned back and felt his seat doing odd things to him. A massage, perhaps. No doubt he was tense and the poor chair was trying to fix things. But the chair was programmed for a bigger man. It seemed to be humming as if with an overloaded circuit. Was it troubled just by the size differential, Burris wondered? Or did the restructured contours of his anatomy cause it some distress?

He mentioned the chair to Aoudad, who cut it off. Smiling, Burris complimented himself on his state of mellowed relaxation. He had not said a bitter thing since Aoudad’s arrival. He was calm, tempest-free, hovering at dead center. Good. Good. He had spent too much time alone, letting his miseries corrode him. This fool Aoudad was an angel of mercy come to lift him out of himself. I am grateful, said Burris pleasantly to himself.

“This is it. Chalk’s office is here.”

The building was relatively low, no more than three or four storeys, but it was well set off from the towers that flanked it. Its sprawling horizontal bulk compensated for its lack of height. Wide-legged angles stretched off to right and left; Burris, making useful use of his added peripheral vision, peered as far as he could around the sides of the building and calculated that it was probably eight-sided. The outer wall was of a dull brown metal, neatly finished, pebbled in an ornamental way. No light was visible within; but, then, there were no windows.

One wall abruptly gaped at them as a hidden portcullis silently lifted. The car rocketed through and came to a halt in the bowels of the building. Its hatch sprang off. Burris became aware that a short bright-eyed man was peering into the car at him.

He experienced a moment of shock at finding himself so unexpectedly being viewed by a stranger. Then he recovered and reversed the flow of the sensation, staring back. The short man was worth staring at, too. Without the benefit of malevolent surgeons, he was nonetheless strikingly ugly. Virtually neckless; thick matted dark hair descending into his collar; large jug ears; a narrow-bridged nose; incredible long, thin lips that just now were puckered in a repellent pout of fascination. No beauty.

Aoudad said: “Minner Burris. Leontes d’Amore. Of the Chalk staff.”

“Chalk’s awake. He’s waiting,” said d’Amore. Even his voice was ugly.

Yet he faces the world every day, Burris reflected.

Hooded once more, he let himself be swept along a network of pneumatic tubes until he found himself gliding into an immense cavernous room studded with various levels of activity-points. Just now there was little activity; the desks were empty, the screens were silent. A gentle glow of thermoluminescent fungi lit the place. Turning slowly, Burris panned his gaze across the room and up a series of crystal rungs until he observed, seated thronewise near the ceiling on the far side, a vast individual.

Chalk. Obviously.

Burris stood absorbed in the sight, forgetting for a moment the million tiny pricking pains that were his constant companions. So big? So enfleshed? The man had devoured a legion of cattle to gain that bulk.

Beside him, Aoudad gently urged him forward, not quite daring to touch Burris’s elbow.

“Let me see you,” Chalk said. His voice was light, amiable. “Up here. Up to me, Burris.”

A moment more. Face to face.

Burris shrugged off the hood and then the cloak. Let him have his look. Before this mound of flesh I need feel no shame.

Chalk’s placid expression did not change.

He studied Burris carefully, with deep interest and no hint of revulsion. At a wave of his pudgy hand, Aoudad and d’Amore vanished. Burris and Chalk remained alone in the huge, dim room.

“They did quite a job on you,” Chalk remarked. “Do you have any idea why they did it?”

“Sheer curiosity. Also the desire to improve. In their inhuman way, they’re quite human.”

“What do they look like?”

“Pockmarked. Leathery. I’d rather not say.”

“All right.” Chalk had not risen. Burris stood before him, hands folded, the little outer tentacles twining and untwining. He sensed a seat behind him and took it unbidden.

“You have quite a place here,” he said.

Chalk smiled and let the statement roll away. He said, “Does it hurt?”

“What?”

“Your changes.”

“There’s considerable discomfort. Terran pain-killers don’t help much. They did things to the neural channels, and no one here knows quite where to apply the blocks. But it’s bearable. They say the limbs of amputees throb for years after they’ve been removed. Same sensation, I guess.”

“Were any of your limbs removed?”

“All of them,” Burris said. “And put back on again a new way. The medics who examined me were very pleased by my joints. Also my tendons and ligaments. These are my own original hands, a little altered. My feet. I’m not really sure how much else of me is mine and how much theirs.”

“And internally?”

“All different. Chaos. A report is being prepared. I haven’t been back on Earth long. They studied me awhile, and then I rebelled.”

“Why?”

“I was becoming a thing. Not only to them but to myself. I’m not a thing. I’m a human being who’s been rearranged. Inside, I’m still human. Prick me and I’ll bleed. What can you do for me, Chalk?”

A meaty hand waved. “Patience. Patience. I want to know more about you. You were a space officer?”

“Yes.”

“Academy and all?”

“Naturally.”

“Your rating must have been good. You were given a tough assignment. First landing on a world of intelligent beings—never a cinch. How many in your team?”

“Three. We all went through surgery. Prolisse died first, then Malcondotto. Lucky for them.”

“You dislike your present body?”

“It has its advantages. The doctors say I’m likely to live five hundred years. But it’s painful, and it’s also embarrassing. I was never cut out to be a monster.”

“You’re not as ugly as you may think you are,” Chalk observed. “Oh, yes, children run screaming from you, that sort of thing. But children are conservatives. They loathe anything new. I find that face of yours quite attractive in its way. I daresay a lot of women would fling themselves at your feet.”

“I don’t know. I haven’t tried.”

“Grotesqueness has its appeal, Burris. I weighed over twenty pounds at birth. My weight has never hampered me. I think of it as an asset.”

“You’ve had a lifetime to get used to your size,” said Burris. “You accommodate to it in a thousand ways. Also, you chose to be this way. I was the victim of an incomprehensible whim. It’s a violation. I’ve been raped, Chalk.”

“You want it all undone?”

“What do you think?”

Chalk nodded. His eyelids slid down, and it appeared that he had dropped instantly into a sound sleep. Burris waited, baffled, and more than a minute passed. Without stirring, Chalk said, “Surgeons here on Earth can transplant brains successfully from one body to another.”

Burris started, seized by a grand mal of fevered excitement. A new organ within his body injected spurts of some unknown hormone into the bowl of strangenesses beside his heart. He dizzied. He scrabbled in the roiling surf, dashed again and again onto the abrasive sand by relentless waves.

Chalk went on calmly, “Does the technology of the thing interest you at all?”

The tentacles of Burris’s hands writhed uncontrollably.

The smooth words came: “The brain must be surgically isolated within the skull by paring away of all contiguous tissues. The cranium itself is preserved for support and protection. Naturally, absolute hemostasis must be maintained during the long period of anticoagulation, and there are techniques for sealing the base of the skull and the frontal bone to prevent loss of blood. Brain functions are monitored by electrodes and thermoprobes. Circulation is maintained by linking the internal maxillary and internal carotid arteries. Vascular loops, you understand. I’ll spare you the details by which the body is shaved away, leaving only the living brain. At length the spinal cord is severed and the brain is totally isolated, fed by its own carotid system. Meanwhile the recipient has been prepared. The carotid and jugular are dissected away and the major strap muscles in the cervical area are resected. The brain graft is put in place after submergence in an antibiotic solution. The carotid arteries of the isolated brain are connected by a siliconized cannula to the proximal carotid artery of the recipient. A second cannula is fixed in the jugular of the recipient. All this is done in a low freeze to minimize damage. Once the grafted brain’s circulation is meshed with that of the recipient body, we bring the temperature toward normal and begin standard post-operative techniques. A prolonged period of re-education is necessary before the grafted brain has assumed control over the recipient body.”

“Remarkable.”

“Not much of an achievement compared with what was done to you,” Chalk conceded. “But it’s been carried out successfully with higher mammals. Even with primates.”

“With humans?”

“No.”

“Then—”

“Terminal patients have been used. Brains grafted into recently deceased. Too much goes against the chance of success there, though. Still, there have been some near misses. Another three years, Burris, and human beings will be swapping brains as easily as they swap arms and legs today.”

Burris disliked the sensations of intense anticipation that roared through him. His skin temperature was uncomfortably high. His throat throbbed.

Chalk said, “We build a synthetic for you, duplicating in as many respects as possible your original appearance. We assemble a golem, you see, from the spare-parts bank, but we do not include a brain. We transplant your brain into the assemblage. There will be differences, naturally, but you’ll be fundamentally integral. Interested?”

“Don’t torture me, Chalk.”

“I give you my word I’m serious. Two technological problems stand in the way. We have to master the technique of total assembly of a recipient, and we have to keep it alive until we can successfully carry out the transplant. I’ve already said it would take three years to achieve the second. Say two more to build the golem. Five years, Burris, and you’ll be fully human again.”

“What will this cost?”

“Perhaps a hundred million. Perhaps more.”

Burris laughed harshly. His tongue—how like a serpent’s now!—flickered into view.

Chalk: “I’m prepared to underwrite the entire cost of your rehabilitation.”

“You’re dealing in fantasy now.”

“I ask you to have faith in my resources. Are you willing to part with your present body if I can supply something closer to the human norm?”

It was a question that Burris had never expected anyone to ask him. He was startled by the extent of his own vacillation. He detested this body and was bowed beneath the weight of the thing that had been perpetrated on him. And yet, was he coming to love his alienness?

He said after a brief pause, “The sooner I could shed this thing, the better.”

“Good. Now, there’s the problem of your getting through the five years or so that this will take. I propose that we attempt to modify your facial appearance, at least, so that you’ll be able to get along in society until we can make the switch. Does that interest you?”

“It can’t be done. I’ve already explored the idea with the doctors who examined me after my return. I’m a mess of strange antibodies, and I’ll reject any graft”

“Do you think that’s so? Or were they merely telling you a convenient lie?”

“I think it’s so.”

“Let me send you to a hospital,” Chalk suggested. “We’ll run a few tests to confirm the earlier verdict. If it’s so, so. If not, we can make life a little easier for you. Yes?”

“Why are you doing this, Chalk? What’s the quid pro quo?”

The fat man pivoted and swung ponderously forward until his eyes were only inches from Burris’s face. Burris surveyed the oddly delicate lips, the fine nose, the immense cheeks and puffy eyelids. In a low voice Chalk murmured, “The price is a steep one. It’ll sicken you to the core. You’ll turn down the whole deal.”

“What is it?”

“I’m a purveyor of popular amusement. I can’t remotely get my investment back out of you, but I want to recover what I can.”

“The price?”

“Full rights to commercial exploitation of your story,” said Chalk. “Beginning with your seizure by the aliens, carrying through your return to Earth and your difficult adjustment to your altered condition, and continuing on through your forthcoming period of re-adaptation. The world already knows that three men came to a planet called Manipool, two were killed, and a third came back the victim of surgical experiments. That much was announced, and then you dropped from sight. I want to put you back in sight. I want to show you rediscovering your humanity, relating to other people again, groping upward out of hell, eventually triumphing over your catastrophic experience and coming out of it purged. It’ll mean a frequent intrusion on your privacy, and I’m prepared to hear you refuse. After all, one would expect—”

“It’s a new form of torture, is it?”

“Something of an ordeal, perhaps,” Chalk admitted. His wide forehead was stippled with sweat. He looked flushed and strained, as though approaching some sort of inner emotional climax.

“Purged,” Burris whispered. “You offer me purgatory.”

“Call it that.”

“I hide for weeks. Then I stand naked before the universe for five years. Eh?”

“Expenses paid.”

“Expenses paid,” said Burris. “Yes. Yes. I accept the torture. I’m your toy, Chalk. Only a human being would refuse the offer. But I accept. I accept!”